By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

CHAPEL HILL — Rowan County AD Joe Nixon knows the lay of the land and pleaded the case for North Rowan athletics.

The NCHSAA Board of Directors listened to final appeals earlier this week, all of them anguished, some of them desperate, from the 27 schools less than pleased with their conference assignments for the realignment that begins in the fall of 2025 and extends through the spring of 2029.

Nixon, a former head football coach at North Rowan, West Rowan and Mooresville, testified to the board that North would face “unbearable” travel if the realignment plan passed.

He also informed the board there was an “easy fix” for North’s plight, but he didn’t get very far.

The “easy fix” Nixon suggested was that North Rowan continue to play with familiar foes West Davidson, East Davidson and Thomasville in a new-look conference that will include Randolph schools Providence Grove, Trinity and Wheatmore.

Nixon said North reached out to those schools for support, but they preferred their six-team conference without North Rowan. Some ignored the Cavaliers. Those polite enough to respond said they liked their new league just fine.

Nixon told the board that North Rowan’s second choice was playing in the Stanly-centered league it was assigned to — after all, the Cavaliers have done that before — but he argued that the unexpected addition of three far-flung schools to that conference for football season will hurt the Cavaliers with travel costs.

The board wasn’t sold on Nixon’s heart-felt entreaties and voted 17 to 2, with one abstention, to deny North Rowan’s appeal and keep the Cavaliers where they were assigned in the NCHSAA’s third draft.

At the end of a long, long day, the board voted to pass its realignment plan. Now it’s set in stone. Credit the board with listening patiently, but sometimes listening and hearing are two different things.

It’s been a tough grind for all involved. This is a revolutionary realignment plan unlike any before it in NCHSAA history because there will be eight classifications.

There will be 64 conferences. Fifty-four of those 64 conferences will be split leagues — leagues with teams from more than one classification. There will be some conferences with teams from three different classifications. That’s weird and that’s new.

The NCHSAA adopted a “Big 32” model, which means the biggest 32 NCHSAA schools are 8As. All the other classifications from 1A to 7A will have about 58 schools.

Fans will have to adjust to new classifications for the Rowan schools. All of them have changed.

Classification for this realignment was solely based on enrollment numbers.

North Rowan moves from 1A to 2A. Salisbury moves from 2A to 4A.  South Rowan moves from 3A to 4A. West Rowan, Carson and East Rowan move from 3A to 5A. West and East will be two of the smaller 5As in the state. Carson will be a medium-sized 5A.

A.L. Brown and Mooresville move from 4A to 7A, so they’ll be competing at the highest level outside the Big 32.

School athletic budgets depend on sensible conference schedules. The ideal conference fills most of that schedule but also leaves room for scheduling money-making rivalry games outside the conference.

North Rowan has seven conference dates on a 10-game football schedule. West Rowan has indicated it will fill one of them. Hopefully, the other two can be filled by the Rowan teams in the South Piedmont Conference.

North has been assigned to a strange conference that is really two different conferences.

There’s a football conference that will include North Rowan, Mountain Island Charter, Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, Bonnie Cone Leadership Academy, North Stanly, South Stanly, Albemarle and Union Academy.

For sports other than football, the league membership will be North Rowan. North Stanly, South Stanly, Albemarle, Union Academy and Gray Stone Day, which does not field a football team.

The football league has two 1As (Bonnie Cone and Thomas Jefferson), four 2As (Albemarle, North Rowan, South Stanly and Mountain Island Charter) and two 3As (North Stanly, Union Academy).

Gray Stone will be a 2A in the sports in which it competes.

North Rowan’s boys basketball team just traveled to a playoff game at Thomas Jefferson Classical Academy, which is in Rutherford County, so fans can tell you it’s a 100-mile, one-way trip, with potential complications from Charlotte and Gastonia traffic.

It’s about 60 miles from North Rowan to Mountain Island Charter, which is located in Mount Holly, just a little west of Charlotte. Charlotte has a lot of people and a lot of cars.

Bonnie Cone is not that far away as the crow flies, but Huntersville is not the easiest place to drive to from Spencer.

A good indication that this three-classification, football-only conference is not the ideal plan is that Mountain Island Charter and Thomas Jefferson also were appealing their fate to the board on Monday.

Thomas Jefferson pointed out that every football road trip it takes will be an issue in the new league, and there were two other potential conference assignments that made much more sense for them.

As was the case with the Cavaliers, their pleas fell on deaf ears.

There wasn’t much angst or drama with the SPC.

Salisbury eagerly joins South Rowan as the two 4As in the new SPC.

West, East, Carson, Northwest Cabarrus, Concord and Robinson will be 5As.

The two-county league will have the ideal 8-team structure.

Central Cabarrus will be 6A in the fall and will play in a split 6A/7A league made up of Cabarrus schools such as A.L. Brown and some of the smaller Charlotte schools. Lake Norman Charter moves out and will play as a 4A in a league made up of similar schools.

The Central Carolina Conference was splintered, with North Rowan, Salisbury, Lexington and South Davidson assigned to four different leagues. Only West Davidson, Thomasville and East Davidson remain together.

Lexington will be 4A and will be playing with schools such as Central Davidson, Ledford and Randleman.

Davie will be 7A and bounced around from an Iredell league to a Winston-Salem league during the process, but finally settled in a 6A/7A conference with the Iredells, including Mooresville and Statesville.